“Mum calls you happy.” Emily giggled.“Huh? I don’t know your Mom…” “She says men like you are happy!”Garry stared at her, uncomprehending. He’d rarely felt less happy in his life.“She means gay,” Max said, and now there was a grin on his face.”

“He lives near me so we do some things together.” His throat felt tight. “Well, lots of things, actually. But of course we have our own lives. Both know it’s important we don’t get in each other’s way. It’s not like he needs me, needs my help for anything.”“But you do.”Garry turned his head so swiftly, he heard it crick.“You need him,” Emily announced, gravely. “Don’t you?” And while he desperately searched for something to say that would stop this right now, she peered carefully at his shoulders and neck.“You need him to do your hair, to comb out those very nasty dangles. It’s difficult, I know. I can’t do my plates on my own.”Max caught Garry’s eye. “Tangles,” he mouthed. “Plaits.”

“She wriggled against him, obviously pleased. “So are you homey special?”He frowned. He didn’t want to keep questioning her, but this one had him foxed. No combination of vowels or spoonerism made this one clear. Max barely moved his head but he answered as usual for her.“She means ho-mo-sex-u-al.”

“When he bent down and swept her up in his arms and carried her to the divan, she did not protest. Shefumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat, eager to touch his flesh and feel his heart beat against her hand.He moved over her and looked down at her with eyes dark with passion. “I have missed you,” he said.“God, how I have missed you.”“Show me,” she said, and sighed with happiness when he put his hand on her ankle and began to slide itup her leg.”

“Is this the happiness you seek?” he whispered hoarsely. “Tell me now, and I will give it to you.” Hemoved down her body, his mouth on her bosom, his breath hot on her skin, and his hand freeing herbreast. Phoebe ran her fingers through his hair, thrusting her breast forward as he took the peak into hismouth.This was insanity!“Only a profligate would confuse happiness with desire—Oh!” The swell of pleasurehis mouth on her breast gave her was startling, and she cried out.“And only a fool would try and separate the two,” he responded hotly before he closed his moutharound her other breast”

“Clary?” Jace tilted his head to the side, studying her face. “You do—you still love me, don’t you?” “I love Jace Lightwood,” she said. “I don’t know who you are.”

“That was the moment Anna felt something inside her trip and fall, something come clean away from all the snares and traps and tangles of the propriety in which she’d been steeped all these years. And as he began to move, she pressed into him as he had shown her, looked up at him from beneath her lashes as he’d directed, and said, in a purring voice, “My, my, sir, how well you move us about the dance floor! One can’t help but wonder if you move as well in other, more intimate circumstances,” she said, and let her lips stretch into a soft smile.It worked. Grif’s grin faded; he slowed his step a little and blinked down at her for a moment. But that dangerous smile slowly appeared again, starting in his eyes and casually reaching his lips. “If ye were to pose such a question to me, lass, I’d say, ‘As fast or as slow, as soft or as hard as ye’d want, leannan. Pray tell, how would ye want?’”The tingling in her groin was a signal that she was on perilous ground. Anna looked into his green eyes, so dark and so deep that she couldn’t quite determine if this was a game they were playing or something far more dangerous. And her good sense, shaped and controlled from years of living among high society, quietly shut down, allowing the real Anna, the Anna who yearned to be loved, to be held and caressed and adored and know all manner of physical pleasure, to slide deeper into the circle of his arms.“I don’t rightly know how I’d want, sir, other than to say…” Her voice trailed away as she let her gaze roam his face, the perfectly tied neckcloth, the breadth of his shoulders, his thick arms. And then she lifted her gaze to his, saw something smoldering there, and recklessly whispered, “… that I’d most definitely want.”He said nothing. The muscles in his jaw bulged as if he refrained from speaking, and she realized that they had come to a halt. But then his hand spread beneath hers, his palm pressed to her palm, and he laced his fingers between hers, one by one, and with the last one, he closed his hand, gripping hers tightly. “Tha sin glè mhath,” he whispered hoarsely.Anna smiled, lifted a curious brow.“I said, that’s very good, lass. Very good indeed”